I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Six Cats Being Fixed Today

I've got six cats up being fixed today. Three are Albany cats. Two of those come from a house I've gotten cats fixed from before. She had left a message. It's a house with a history.

A sordid queasy history, to my memory.

The old man who lived there, the current residents' father, had no indoor plumbing and for decades, did his thing in a bucket he then dumped out back. When he died a few years ago, he fell between a space heater, which was on, and the wall. His body was not discovered for two weeks time. It had bloated and exploded. Uh huh.

The low income daughter inherited the place. She has no money to fix it up and clean it up, but is living there nonetheless. She has a meth history. She told me, when she was on meth, one of her cats got hit by a car and it's leg was flopping. She had no money for a vet. So, high on meth, she and a boyfriend, tried to pour whiskey down the cats throat. That was right before they ran the cats broken leg through a band saw. The cat lived another month, probably in agony and terribly infected.

Another young relative, and I can't recall how related, just a young kid, lived with his biological father and when he died suddenly, of a heart problem or drug issue, the kid lived with the dead body for three days.

The house and its occupants have a history. That's what I'm saying.

But she makes sure any cats she gets now get fixed and calls me. I picked those two up and then her adult daughter also had a cat who needed done. I like these folks for whatever reason. They had horrible upbringings, terrible struggles, but always seem to weather the pain of pasts and present with stoic cheerfulness. They're always grateful and respectful.

The other three being fixed are three more from the Crabtree lot. I nabbed one last night and one this morning, by use of the old fashioned way of selective trapping. I rigged a fish line to the door of the trap, running it up and through a plant hangar hook, on the porch eve, and stringing it out to my car, where I tied it off to the passenger side seat head rest. I put a bunch of food in the back of the trap and sat there waiting, with scissors, for an unfixed cat to go into the trap and eat.

I had to wait awhile, while some fixed males went in and out, then the brown tabby female, who somewhere has three two month old kittens, went in, and I snipped the fish line, holding the door up. Door of trap drops, brown tabby prolific female caught.

This morning, I went out early again. I'd made a crucial embarrassing error. I repeatedly called the wrong person. This began at the Circle K. I stopped there about 6:15 a.m. for coffee, and thought I was calling the Crabtree cats caretaker, when I was mistakenly calling the owner of the last Albany cat I picked up last night. I was telling her, from the parking lot, "well, I'm on my way, be there in 20. How are all the cats doing? When we catch them all, we can all finally get some sleep." She sounded a little strange in response, but said nothing else.

So I get to the trailer out in Crabtree, and set up the fish line and all and call her again, thinking I"m calling the woman inside that trailer. I say stuff like "Come on out, shake the food, call the cats, move the dish a foot from the front of the trap and then go back inside." Again, she says almost nothing, but sounds confused, says "I don't see you out there."

By the third time, I realize my mistake and apologize profusely. I said "I probably woke you up! This is what I get fumbling around in the dark, and forgetting you were the last person I called last night, not these folks." She was kind, said she was getting ready for school and no problem. I then called the right number and told the woman I was outside her trailer. The first six digits of both numbers are the same. I did not bother to look at the last four. I was punching redial, on last number called, forgetting I'd called another 791 number in Albany last.

The Crabtree woman was shocked because it was dark, she was up and she had not heard me up messing around on her porch. Made her worry about safety, had it been a thief or worse, that she would never hear them. I reassured her I have learned to tiptoe around in the dark like a cat. I told her about slipping in and out of homeless camps without so much as a flashlight, to better catch the cats without interference and even their dogs didn't hear me.

I was after the one female left, Lucy. There are two other males not fixed there, too. Esther, yeah, that's his name, a blue point Siamese, then Grayboy, a gray tabby and brother of Squeeky. I'd never seen him but when a gray tabby finally strolled into the trap, after many of the fixed cats already had, I snipped the line and had Grayboy. I gave up on Lucy and Esther.

I picked up Snowball, the fat not pregnant Siamese, when dropping off the six. She's in my garage in a hutch. She is ballooned out in a strange fashion. In pregnant looking fashion.

I know she has the ear tip, the spay scar, the vet exam that decreed it's just fat, all that, guess I'm paranoid, don't want kittens at the park. I'll worm her, watch her a week, make sure, before taking her back.

As for the cat who ran into my garage yesterday morning, really early, the neighbor came and looked, said she thinks the cat is owned somewhere nearby, that she's always in her backyard and that she often feeds her there. She carried her back to her backyard and let her go. I had put her in a rabbit hutch in my garage, not wanting her to get hurt by my car going in and out. I think she came in because it was so darn cold.